Month: September 2020

Debased Debate: Trump’s Petulant Interruptions Were Filled with More and Bigger Lies

Posted by on September 30, 2020 at 11:11 am. 3 Comments :

What happened on Tuesday night was not a debate. It was an unprecedented and disgraceful debasement of the proud tradition of American political discourse. Donald Trump managed to embarrass himself (and the nation) to a degree that exceeds every other incidence of his doing so. And that’s really saying something. He’s validating a recent poll wherein a majority of voters said that Trump doesn’t have the mental soundness to serve.

Donald Trump Baby at Podium

Prior to the debate, Trump was laying the groundwork to make excuses for what he apparently believed was his inevitable loss. Those excuses consisted primarily of bizarre conspiracy theories. Trump also made the preposterous accusation that the debate moderator, Chris Wallace, was “controlled by the radical left.” And Trump’s GOP confederates were convinced that Biden would be cheating by being smarter than Trump. How devious.

Among the rhetorical atrocities uttered by Trump was his abject failure to call on his white supremacist supporters to refrain from violence in the event of his electoral loss. Trump was incapable of making a simple statement condemning all violence, as Joe Biden did. Instead, Trump gave a shout out to the racist Proud Boys, telling them to “stand back and stand by.” It was as if he was issuing orders as their commander. And that’s precisely how Trump’s racist militias interpreted it.

However, the most pronounced departure from civility during the debate was Trump’s repeated and incessant interruptions of both Biden and Wallace. And he made these interruptions in order to squeeze in as many flagrant lies as possible in the limited time available. CNN’s fact checker, Daniel Dale, documented the avalanche of untruths throughout the debate. What follows are some of the most blatant and shameless examples of deliberate dishonesty ever recorded in a presidential debate (as enumerated by Dale in his live tweeting). Or as Dale describes it…

“This president is a serial liar who keeps serially lying. This is just so much dishonesty on the biggest stage by the President of the United States. […] This is always what it’s like with Donald Trump. This is what it’s been like for five years. Basically any unscripted event featuring Donald Trump will feature a huge quantity of false claims. […] Trump is an unprecedented liar in the Oval Office. […] You’re be hard pressed to find literally any subject on which the American people can, right now and over the last five years, have been able to take Donald Trump at his word.”

TRUMP’S DEBASED DEBATE LIES:

It’s not true Biden would “extinguish” the private insurance of 180 million people. He opposed the Sanders-style “Medicare for All”

Trump didn’t “ban” travel from China or Europe. He imposed travel restrictions with numerous exemptions — for US citizens, green card holders, many of their family members — and the Europe restrictions exempted entire countries.

There’s no evidence Trump’s executive order will reduce drug prices 80% or 90%.

Trump lies that he was talking “sarcastically” when he mused about injecting disinfectant to fight the virus.

Biden has not proposed a shutdown or put forward a shutdown plan. He said in an August interview that he’d shut things down *if scientists said that was necessary in a virus crisis.*

No basis for Trump to claim that there have been no problems from his big pandemic-era rallies. [Just ask Herman Cain]

Trump claims he paid “millions of dollars” in federal income tax despite the NYT having obtained his tax returns, which show he paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 & 2017

Trump falsely claims he’s brought back 700,000 manufacturing jobs.

There’s no evidence Biden acted corruptly or improperly re the Ukrainian prosecutor.

It’s false that Biden does not have “any” law enforcement support [via Fox News].

Biden has not said that riots are peaceful protest. He’s called peaceful protest peaceful protest.

Our suburbs would not be “gone” if Biden was elected.

Biden is not talking about defunding the police. He just said he opposes defunding the police.

Kellyanne Conway DID say more violence was good for Trump’s prospects; she said on Fox that “the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better news for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.”

“Unsolicited” ballots are not fraud prone.

It’s not true that 30% and 40% of ballots are being “lost.”

Trump has gotten insulin prices so low, it’s “like water.” – insulin still retails for roughly $300 a vial.

A post-debate poll of debate watchers by CNN is an early indicator that Trump’s rudely Neanderthal behavior has succeeded only in sabotaging his own already floundering campaign. Biden was judged by a solid majority to have won the debate (60-28%). He was seen as being more truthful (65-29%). A majority of voters said that they trusted Biden more than Trump on critical national issues like racial inequality (66%), health care (66%), the coronavirus outbreak (64%), and Supreme Court nominations (54%). And while most respondents (57%) said they were unlikely to change their vote, those who were moved were three times as likely to have moved into Biden’s camp than Trump’s (33-11%). And overall favorability was strongly on Biden’s side (62-35%).

This is more bad news for Trump who was already lagging in every national poll, as well as most of the crucial battleground state polls. What this says for the future of the debate schedule is hard to predict. Biden would have justification for not participating in any more of these Trump-induced psyche ward rumbles. But the next debate has a town hall format and it would be interesting to see if Trump would insult the voters to their faces. Either way, expect to Trump to become even more despicable and deranged. Because, as Biden said with regard to Trump’s negligent and and incompetent mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, “It is what it is, because you are who you are.”

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Is in Full Panic Mode: He Knows He’s Going to Lose the Debate

Posted by on September 29, 2020 at 1:08 pm. 1 Comments :

The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is tonight and the pregame is heating up to a frothing stew of crazy. While Biden has been studiously holed up preparing for the event, Trump has been tweeting and doing Fox News interviews wherein he insists he doesn’t need any preparation.

Trump Fear

For weeks Trump has been making overt but baseless suggestions that Biden is suffering from mental infirmities that would make him unfit to be president. But Trump’s campaign of nasty projections has had no effect on voters, a majority of whom actually say that it’s Trump who doesn’t have the soundness to serve. He has also been helping Biden by lowering the bar for his performance to be considered successful.

As a result of this ignorant miscalculation on Trump’s part, he is now trying to steer back 180 degrees by claiming that Biden might actually have an advantage in the debate. But this only makes Trump look even more desperate. particularly considering the excuses Trump has latched unto to explain why Biden is going to crush him. Here is what we’ve heard so far from Trump and his panic-ridden campaign:

  • Biden might wear an ear piece to get offstage coaching
  • Biden requested breaks every thirty minutes
  • Biden would be using performance enhancing drugs
  • Biden got the debate questions in advance

None of these preposterous allegations have even a hint of evidence. They are entirely manufactured by Trump & Company out of sheer desperation. The assertion that Biden got the questions in advance actually came from Infowars conspiracy crackpot, Jerome Corsi. That’s how low they are sinking to invent even these lame controversies.

As for Trump, he asked the debate commission to have the moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News, refrain from mentioning how many people have died from the coronavirus. Trump also went after Wallace last week, saying that “he’ll be controlled by the radical left.” But then, in Trump’s diseased brain, so is Rupert Murdoch and Joe Biden, and they’re all servants of George Soros.

All of this insanity is being thrown around hours before the debate has even begun. That can mean only one thing: Trump knows damn well that he’s gonna lose bigly. He knows that he can’t compete in an intellectual contest where facts and logic and an ability to discuss critical matters coherently are the components of success. All Trump is capable of is lying, whining, and casting insults like a petulant six year old.

So expect a flurry of that sort of infantilism from Trump tonight. And then expect him to declare himself the winner tomorrow. His narcissism is so pronounced that it simply doesn’t matter what actually happens. He can only see himself as the pure manifestation of human perfection and superiority (i.e. master race). And his ever-shrinking cadre of followers will drool in adoration of their infallible cult leader. All of which will make it just that much harder to face reality on November third when Trump is trounced in the election.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Lies While Whining that the NY Times is Lying About His Taxes

Posted by on September 28, 2020 at 1:58 pm. 1 Comments :

The bombshell revelations about Donald Trump’s taxes published by the New York Times are both shocking and disturbingly expected. Anyone who has been paying attention to Trump’s flagrantly criminal behaviors will not be surprised to learn that he has been cheating on his taxes for decades.

Donald Trump

Nevertheless, it’s jarring to discover the extent of Trump’s illegal financial dealings. His massive indebtedness is not merely a legal and ethical failing, it makes him a national security threat as someone who is vulnerable to pressures from foreign adversaries. What’s more, his failure to pay his fair share is an insult to the millions of Americans who are forced to pick up the slack. And it is monumentally hypocritical because it deprives the military, law enforcement, healthcare, and every other public service of scarce funding, while he’s trying to take credit for supporting those services and simultaneously cutting their budgets.

On Monday morning Trump lashed out against the New York Times in a series of dishonest and incoherent tweets. The only thing this outburst succeeded in achieving is establishing how desperate and scared Trump is. The tweetstorm began with a familiar Trumpian rant:

“The Fake News Media, just like Election time 2016, is bringing up my Taxes & all sorts of other nonsense with illegally obtained information & only bad intent. I paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits…..”

As is often the case with Trump, he couldn’t make a logical argument if his life depended on it. Here he is saying that the information in the Times’ story was illegally obtained, which would suggest that it consists of authentic documents. But if the documents are authentic, then they aren’t fake. And if they’re fake, then they aren’t illegal. And notice that Trump asserts that he “paid many millions of dollars in taxes,” except for some unspecified credits. So he he isn’t really denying that he only paid trivial amounts after the credits, just as the Times reported. Then he goes on to say that…

“…..Also, if you look at the extraordinary assets owned by me, which the Fake News hasn’t, I am extremely under leveraged – I have very little debt compared to the value of assets. Much of this information is already on file, but I have long said that I may release….”

Here Trump is saying nothing substantive at all. His assertion that the Media hasn’t looked at his assets is simply absurd. And his claim that he’s “under leveraged” isn’t borne out by any evidence. The truth is that he is mired in debt, with hundreds of millions of dollars owed to unknown parties who could easily take advantage of his vulnerability. But Trump still wasn’t through. He added that he may release his…

“…..Financial Statements, from the time I announced I was going to run for President, showing all properties, assets and debts. It is a very IMPRESSIVE Statement, and also shows that I am the only President on record to give up my yearly $400,000 plus Presidential Salary!”

Indeed, he has been saying that for four years, without ever fulfilling that promise, or intending to. But now he is also bragging that he is “the only President on record to give up my yearly $400,000” salary. That is a flagrant and easily disproven lie. George Washington. Herbert Hoover, and John Kennedy all donated their salaries to charity. Trump, however, donated his salary right back to various government agencies (i.e. Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, etc.). Which is actually illegal.

Trump’s intention was to lavish himself with undeserved praise for not taking funds from taxpayers. However, he conveniently leaves out that he earns many millions more than his salary from foreign governments and other conflicted political parties who are paying for leases in Trump properties and stays at his hotels and resorts. Additionally, Trump benefits from the government paying the expenses for himself, his staff, and the Secret Service, when they travel with him on his frequent visits to his resorts and utilize ancillary services (i.e. dining, travel, communications, golf carts, etc.). This income far exceeds his presidential salary.

There is only one priority for Donald Trump: Himself! He will always put his own personal and financial interests above those of anyone else, and especially above those of the country that he has never served. That’s why his negligent mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in so much suffering and tragedy. It’s why the economy has slumped into a recession. It’s why he cozies up to foreign dictators and alienates America’s allies. And it’s why he must not be allowed to continue in office where he will surely betray the country again.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump’s Psychotic Sunday Tweetstorm Defies All Reason, Decency, and Honesty

Posted by on September 27, 2020 at 12:10 pm. 3 Comments :

As the coronavirus pandemic surges throughout the country, Donald Trump is hard at work at what he considers his job: posting lies and incoherent babbling on Twitter. After which he promptly assumed his post on the golf course for the remainder of the day. Priorities.

Donald Trump

Trump began his rage-tweeting with a demonstration of his cowardice and utter desperation. “I will be strongly demanding a Drug Test of Sleepy Joe Biden prior to, or after, the Debate on Tuesday night,” he twitted. Never mind that he is in no position to make such a demand. It’s a hollow appeal for something he knows won’t happen and that he would never submit to himself. Trump is simply trying to malign Biden’s mental fitness for office, even though polls show that a majority of voters say that Trump is the one who doesn’t have the mental soundness to serve.

Following that, Trump took a swipe at Sen. Richard Blumenthal for embellishing his military service ten years ago. Trump said that because Blumenthal was untruthful he should be impeached and “should not be entitled to a vote on anything of importance!” But if that’s Trump’s standard, then Trump’s punishment for telling more than 20,000 lies should be 20,000 times worse. At least Blumenthal had the dignity to serve his country in uniform, as opposed to Cadet Bone Spurs who dodged the draft five times and insults America’s fallen as “losers” and “suckers.”

Next up was a frantic twantrum over Mike Bloomberg’s donation to a Florida group that is paying the outstanding fees of former prisoners so that they can vote. Trump is terrified of losing the state and determined to suppress the vote any way he can. And in this case he also recklessly charges that Bloomberg “committed a serious crime” without bothering to mention what law was broken.

Then there is Trump’s three word, all caps command to “WATCH THE BALLOTS!!!” It’s difficult to tell if Trump is advocating election integrity (yeah, right), or promoting a new show on Fox about the Ballot family. That would make a good vehicle for Scott Baio as the patriarch of a Klan clan that is afraid of the Black Lives Matter movement and a society that has turned against his repulsive brand of bigotry.

Finally, Trump re-twitterated his obsessive commitment to terminate Obamacare, even while the nation is suffering through a deadly pandemic. He grotesquely characterizes it as “a big WIN for the USA!” And as he frequently does, he lied about it being “replaced with a MUCH better, and FAR cheaper, alternative.” However, Trump has never had a healthcare plan, despite announcing that one would be unveiled in two weeks numerous times for the past three years. And the GOP has similarly spent ten years promising a replacement, but has never even drafted a proposal.

It’s notable that in this Twitter tirade Trump has focused exclusively on his political pet peeves that he littered with lies and infantile nicknames. He didn’t once mention the pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 200,000 Americans and is, by all the accounts of every expert, going to get worse this winter.

More than anything, Trump wants to shift the public discourse away from COVID-19 and his wretched mishandling of it. He wants people to forget the loss of their loved ones and the illnesses that have resulted in permanent disabilities for many of those who survived. Unfortunately for Trump, the issues he’s using to deflect also have the effect of reminding people of his ignorance, incompetence, and his aspirations to authoritarianism and dictatorship. It’s a lose-lose proposition for America’s Biggest Loser.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Wannabe Dictator Trump Thinks Threatening Dictatorship is Hysterical

Posted by on September 26, 2020 at 1:10 pm. 6 Comments :

For several weeks Donald Trump has toyed with the idea of extending his presidency beyond the constitutionally limited two terms. Along with all of the other insults to America’s most treasured principles, Trump is openly proposing to appoint himself President-for-Life, in the mold of his heroes Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un.

Donald Trump, Mocking Disability

More recently Trump has reinforced these aspirations of tyranny by refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election this November (which he knows is the most likely scenario). He is even freely discussing on his State TV network and Ministry of Disinformation (aka Fox News) his plans to arrange for the Supreme Court to effectively declare him President regardless of the outcome of the election.

Most Americans find this sort of authoritarian demagoguery repulsive, treasonous, and frightening. However, Trump himself thinks it is hysterical. The Daily Beast’s White House reporter, Asawin Suebsaeng, reveals that…

“According to two people familiar with the matter, hours after the president stepped away from the cameras, Trump continued following the fallout in the press, including on cable news, and began privately remarking how amusing it was that his answer was making media and liberal heads explode, and also predictably dominating TV coverage.”

“’He seemed to get a real kick out of it,’ one of the sources said, adding that the president seemed to relish making the press, in Trump’s words, ‘go crazy’ over his non-commitment to democratic norms and procedure. ‘[The president] wasn’t going to be playing by their rules on this just to make them feel comfortable.’”

So emulating Hitler and Mussolini is just a big joke to Trump. And fomenting chaos among the public and the press is just his way of playing by a different set rules that was employed by the fascists who preceded him. However, concern over this this isn’t just being raised by nervous liberals. Former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, Elizabeth Neumann (who has since endorsed Joe Biden), said that “I continue to be concerned that the president’s reckless rhetoric will incite violence from fringe extremists.” In fact, it already has.

Trump’s Republican confederates don’t appear to be worried about this traitorous talk. None have spoken out against it in any substantive manner. Many of them actually waive it off with the excuse that Trump should be taken – as proposed by billionaire Trump supporter Peter Thiel – seriously, but not literally. That’s difficult to do when Trump himself insists that he means what he’s saying. In a recent Trump rally and Coronavirus Super Spreader event, he said that…

“They say ‘He doesn’t wanna turn over [garbled] of course I do. But it’s gotta be a fair election. That’s another scam. They don’t mention anything about ballots […] We’re gonna win. We’re not gonna lose this, except if they cheat. That’s the way I look at it.”

To be clear, Trump is only conceding that he will accept the result of the election if he wins. He is appointing himself the arbiter of whether or not it is fair. And by asserting that the only way he could lose is if Democrats cheat, he is declaring in advance that a win by Joe Biden is inherently illegitimate. Hence, it isn’t fair and he isn’t obliged to accept the outcome.

That’s a closed loop of illogic that is akin to a “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition. It is a tactic used by power mad autocrats. And it reveals Trump’s desperation, fear, and certainty of his fate as a loser who will have to face the consequences of his criminal activities.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News Court Ruling: No ‘Reasonable Viewer’ Takes Tucker Carlson Seriously

Posted by on September 25, 2020 at 12:20 pm. 11 Comments :

The reputation of Fox News has long been a tattered quilt of purposeful dishonesty and overtly partisan right-wing bias. And the last four years has seen Fox go even deeper into the Mariana Trench of propaganda on behalf of Donald Trump, whose authoritarian aspirations demand unflinching loyalty and obedience.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump

Now Fox News has affirmed their role as Trump’s Ministry of Disinformation in a court ruling that relied on the rather bizarre argument that their top rated prime time host, Tucker Carlson, can’t be taken seriously. That, of course, has been starkly evident to anyone with a functioning frontal cortex, but this ruling (actually the second such ruling) cements it in a legal decision that rests on Fox’s own arguments.

Carlson, one of Fox’s most prolific liars, was being sued for defamation by Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who was paid $150,000 by the National Enquirer on behalf of Trump in order to buy her silence about their sexual affair. Subsequently, Carlson did frequent stories aiming to discredit McDougal and defend Trump. In the course of those stories Carlson accused McDougal of “extorting” Trump and made representations that he asserted were “undisputed facts.” The only problem is that they were easily disputed and not remotely factual.

This week a court ruled in favor of Fox News citing their claim that Carlson “cannot be understood to have been stating facts, but instead that he was delivering an opinion using hyperbole for effect.” The ruling went on to state that “given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statements he makes.”

In other words, Carlson is a known liar whose commentaries can be dismissed out of hand as the ravings of an unhinged crackpot. The court concludes that someone with such a pronounced reputation for dishonesty is incapable of defamation because who, other than a complete imbecile, would believe him?

The problem with the “reasonable viewer” standard is that it mistakenly assumes that Carlson has any reasonable viewers. His audience is made up of just the sort of imbeciles who buy into his fallacious babbling. Consequently, defamation is a plausible, almost certain result of Carlson’s unambiguously malicious attacks on McDougal. And therein lies the grounds for McDougal’s appeal.

In the meantime, Fox can no longer pretend that their network provides factual presentations of the news. Not after their lawyer won a defamation suit by arguing that their presenters are clowns performing for an audience that hasn’t yet reached the emotional maturity of stunted adolescents.

As if to confirm his flagrant falsifications, Carlson did a segment Thursday night that brazenly distorted reality to advance a conspiracy theory promoted by Trump about mail-in voting. None of the alleged “facts” presented by Carlson were verifiable. And when Trump tweeted a link to the segment, Twitter slapped a warning on the tweet alerting readers to where they could “Learn how voting by mail is safe and secure.”

Now, anytime someone cites a Fox News reporter as their source, they can be swiftly dismissed for believing the garbage that a court of law ruled “cannot be understood to have been stating facts.” In fact, Fox should be regarded in much the same manner that Carlson once described Trump. “Donald Trump is a salesman,” Carlson began. “He’s a talker, a boaster, a booster, a compulsive self-promoter. At times, he’s a full-blown BS artist.” That may be the one thing that Carlson ever got right.

ADDENDUM: There has been some comparison of this defense to one used by MSNBC in defense of a defamation suit filed against Rachel Maddow by the Trump-fluffing conspiracy crackpots at OAN and elsewhere. However the only similarity is that both argued that their defendant offered opinions.

The difference is that Fox’s lawyers argued that Carlson’s audience did not expect his opinions to be factually based. But MSNBC’s lawyers argued that Maddow’s opinions were “precise factual recitations that indisputably and accurately state the facts” and that her commentary was “fully protected opinion because (a) it was based on disclosed facts.” Big difference.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Whines that Chris Wallace of Fox News is ‘Controlled By the Radical Left’

Posted by on September 24, 2020 at 12:56 pm. NO Comments :

As Election Day draws nearer, Donald Trump continues to descend into a psychotic abyss that exhibits the frantic tangle of his fear and desperation. It’s become serious enough that the American people can’t help but have noticed. Much of the evidence of his mental infirmity is revealed in his increasingly bizarre insistence that the election is rigged against him and that he will refuse to accept the results.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Fake

Adding to the cornucopia of crazy that is Trump these says is how he expresses his roller-coaster, love/hate relationship with his own Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News). Trump has been making almost daily appearances on the network, partly because his cult rallies and phony press conferences are no longer being carried live by every network.

On Thursday morning Trump got another tongue bath from Brian Kilmeade on his Fox News radio show. Among the topics discussed were his disappointment that Fox News polls show him losing to Joe Biden (as do all other polls). Fox’s pollsters are “incompetent,” Trump complained to Kilmeade. “They were one of the most far off of all polls,” Trump lied. “They don’t like me, I can tell you that. The worst polls are usually Fox.” Actually, Fox’s polls are generally pretty accurate and in line with the mainstream of credible polling.

Trump also continued his recent rash of ranting about voting by mail. Never mind that he’s currently imploring his cult followers to do so. But in his latest Fox gripe session, he told Kilmeade that “These [mail-in] ballots are a horror show.” He then went on to weave an entirely made up story about discarded ballots:

“They found six ballots in an office yesterday in a garbage can. They were Trump ballots. Eight ballots. In an office yesterday in a certain state. They had Trump written on it, and they were thrown in a garbage can. And this is what’s gonna happen. This is what’s gonna happen. And we’re investigating that.”

Notice that in a matter of seconds Trump increased the number of trashed ballots thirty percent, from six to eight? By sundown there will have been 8,000 of them. NBC News asked the White House for confirmation of this garbage story, but the response they received failed to back up Trump’s obvious fabrication.

Finally, Trump sought to suck up a bit by complimenting Fox News Sunday anchor, Chris Wallace. However, in Trump’s warped mind, a compliment is bragging about having delivered high ratings for interviews he did with Wallace. “Because,” as Trump said to Kilmeade, “it’s all about ratings.” Trump went on to say what he really thinks of Wallace:

“I would be willing to bet that he won’t ask Biden tough questions. He’ll ask me tough questions. It’ll be unfair, I have no doubt about it. But he’ll be controlled by the radical left. They control him.”

That’s right. Trump thinks Chris Wallace, a seventeen year veteran of Fox News, is controlled by the radical left. As is Rupert Murdoch. And Joe Biden. And they’re all in cahoots with George Soros. It’s conspiracy, I tells ya. And woe be to us all if Trump weren’t here to expose it.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Caught Red-Handed Lying About Biden Using a Teleprompter

Posted by on September 23, 2020 at 12:24 pm. 3 Comments :

Catching Donald Trump in a bald-faced lie is about as difficult as bench pressing a pool noodle. Washington Post fact-checkers have already caught him telling more than 20,000 lies since his inauguration. However, there are times when his fabrications are so distant from reality that they require special attention, because they reveal the extreme lengths to which Trump will go in order to spread his political manure.

Donald Trump Angry

Early Tuesday there was just such a case. In Trump’s morning tweetstorm – that produced twenty-five tweets before noon – there was one post that declared triumphantly that Joe Biden was “caught red-handed using a teleprompter.” This is an allegation that the Trump camp has been unsuccessfully – and with blatant dishonesty – trying to peddle for months. It’s an ironic line of attack considering that Trump regularly uses a teleprompter, but still can’t speak coherently. He recently bragged about how the United States would soon land an astronaut on Nars.

Trump’s latest lame attempt to malign Biden came in the form of a retweet from Jason Miller, the senior advisor to Trump’s reelection campaign. Miller in turn was retweeting Eric Trump, whose superpower is being impervious to the shame of ignorance. What Eric posted was a video that he snatched from another Trump campaign shill that supposedly showed Biden reading answers to questions during a Telemundo interview. Eric’s comment accompanying the video was “Unreal!” Which, of course, it was. Here is the tweet posted by Miller and retweeted by Trump:

The reason Biden wasn’t “pretending” to look at the interviewer was that he was looking at a monitor from which he was taking questions from Telemundo viewers. CNN’s fact-checkers debunked the teleprompter fiction saying that…

“Biden was not using a teleprompter during the interview. Here’s what happened: Telemundo set up a screen, to Biden’s left, for viewers to ask Biden their own questions; Biden was looking to the left because he was addressing his answer directly to a woman who had asked him a question about deportations. Midway through the answer, the screen showing the woman went black, so Biden said, ‘I lost that line.’ Díaz-Balart responded that Biden could just talk with him on the subject.”

All of this was easily verifiable by simply watching the interview. But that’s too much like actual, honest journalism for anyone associated with Trump. So instead, they make up their own perverse version of reality and disseminate that to their viewers who are so cognitively challenged that they will believe anything, no matter how preposterous. These are the same people who think that the coronavirus is a Democratic hoax.

Watching the Trump Klan go through these motions to disparage Biden as mentally unfit is becoming something of a joke. They are getting nowhere. In fact, in a recent poll by Fox News (yes, that Fox News) a majority of the American people said that it’s Trump who doesn’t have the mental soundness to serve. What’s more, Trump has been steadily trailing Biden in every national poll, as well as in most of the critical battleground states.

Trump’s vain determination to belittle Biden’s mental acuity is a strategy sprung from desperation. Trump knows he’s losing and is trying to claw his way out of the ditch he dug for himself. The problem is that these tactics are what got him there in the first place, and he’s only digging himself in deeper.

This will become all the more apparent during the first presidential debate next week. Trump has lowered the bar for Biden so much that Biden only has to show up and refrain from drooling. Meanwhile, Trump will exhibit his customary hostility, ignorance of facts, compulsion to lie, and tendency toward infantile outbursts. That’s not exactly a winning game plan.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Kayleigh McEnany’s Lame Attempt to Whitewash Trump’s Blame for 200,000 Deaths

Posted by on September 22, 2020 at 2:04 pm. NO Comments :

This week the United States achieved another milestone under the “leadership” of Donald Trump. More than 200,000 Americans have died as a result of his negligence, incompetence, and deliberate malfeasance in responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Add to that the 6.7 million people who contracted the disease, many of whom will suffer permanent, debilitating disabilities.

Kayleigh McEnany, Donald Trump

This is unarguably a record of abject failure that translates into tragedy for millions of people. Yet somehow Trump gives himself a A+ for ranking near the bottom worldwide for managing this crisis. The only area that he concedes falling short is in public relations, for which he gives himself a D.

Trump deserves some credit for recognizing how terrible his White House communications operations are. For the most part they have ignored the traditional duties of conveying important information to the American people, choosing instead to conduct itself as an arm of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. And he has repeatedly been at odds with the medical experts on his Coronavirus Task Force. No wonder the cases and fatalities stack up even as other countries are returning to relative normality.

At the helm of Trump’s communications team is his press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. She’s an accomplished liar who is ably filling the shoes of her weasley predecessors Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and “alternative facts” spinner, Kellyanne Conway. As evidence of McEnany’s prowess for falsehoods, observe this response to a question from CNN’s Jim Acosta:

Acosta: The country has had over 200,000 deaths from coronavirus. What do you say to Americans who are outraged over this and blame this administration for so many lives lost in this country?
McEnany: Well, as you’ve heard several doctors on the task force note from this podium, we were looking at the prospect of two million people perishing from the coronavirus in this country. We grieve when even one life is lost, but the fact that we have come nowhere near that number is a testament to this president taking immediate action. After shutting down travel from China, when the other party, Democrats were saying that was xenophobic; for shutting down travel for Europe; for developing landmark therapeutics that are working, like Remdesivir.

There’s a lot to unpack in that brief commentary. To begin with, we were never “looking at the prospect of two million people perishing.” That was a baseline estimate of fatalities if nothing were done at all to mitigate the spread of virus. While Trump didn’t do very much, many governors and mayors took independent actions to shut down hazardous activities and to promote safe practices such as social distancing and the wearing of facial masks, both of which Trump dismissed and even mocked. The two million fatality estimate was never intended to be a benchmark for success. Trump himself used smaller numbers, beginning with fifteen and rising with reported deaths to 60,000. It’s now more than three times that, and growing. That’s a testament to failure.

Furthermore, Trump never shut down travel from either China or Europe. His restrictions were full of exemptions and he applied them too late, after the virus was already spreading in the U.S. The criticism of his xenophobia was connected to his focus on China – even calling it the China virus – despite the fact that most of the cases in the U.S. were traceable to Europe. And finally, McEnany summed up Trump’s accomplishments by giving him credit for developing Remdesivir, a drug developed by Gilead Sciences in 2009.

It’s easy to see why Trump’s PR operations are held in such low repute, even by him. In the exchange above, McEnany never even answered Acosta’s question. But Trump’s own efforts aren’t helping. Just this weekend he made some ludicrous and blatantly false remarks about the coronavirus and it’s potential for transmission:

“Now we know [the coronavirus]. It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems, that’s what it really affects. That’s it. In some states, thousands of people, nobody young below the age of eighteen, like nobody. They have a strong immune system. Who knows? Take your hat off to the young, cause they have a hell of an immune system. But it affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing.”

You’ll recall that just last week Trump was heard on recordings by Bob Woodward for his book, RAGE, saying that COVID-19 affects “not just old…older. Young people too. Plenty of young people.” That was in addition to his admission that he knew from the start how deadly it was, but was playing it down.

200,000 are a lot of “nobodies.” But it was always Trump’s intention to trivialize the massive amount of suffering for which he is directly responsible. That explains the fallacies disseminated by his PR team. However, it isn’t because they performed poorly. In fact, it was probably the best performing agency in his administration. That’s because they were saying precisely what Trump wanted them to say.

McEnany and company were lying on Trump’s behalf and at his direction. So it’s unfair of him to grade them with a D, when they were just doing what they were told. They may have been grossly misinforming the public and putting untold lives at risk, but they were doing exactly the job that Trump hired them to do.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Reveals to Fox News His Plan to Get the Supreme Court to Declare Him President

Posted by on September 21, 2020 at 12:16 pm. 2 Comments :

This year appears to have a rather sadistic bent as it relentlessly piles on melodramas and anxieties. It’s not bad enough that we are suffering through a deadly pandemic that is being dreadfully mismanaged by Donald Trump. We are also having to deal with an economy in recession and civil unrest triggered by systemic racism. And all in an especially contentious election year.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

Adding to those national migraines is the tragic passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Not only has America lost an iconic figure who has made innumerable contributions to civil liberties and equal justice, but it thrusts the nation into a bitterly partisan battle to replace her. Republicans are shamelessly contradicting their previous insistence that the president shouldn’t nominate a Justice during an election year. Apparently that principle only applies to Democratic presidents. The GOP is perfectly OK with nominations by an impeached president who still has multiple criminal and civil indictments hanging over his head.

Making matters worse is Trump himself (as usual), who was “interviewed” twice in two days by Fox News. In a sit-down with Fox’s Mark Levin on Sunday night Trump whined that Fox News wasn’t sufficiently worshipful, and that they catered too much to Democrats. Are we sure that Trump even knows what channel he’s watching?

On Monday Trump visited the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. This is apparently his new regular gig that he leaked last week. It was there that he unleashed some wild speculations and disturbing revelations. When the subject to Ginsburg’s replacement came up, Trump led off with a thoroughly disgraceful allegation maligning the integrity of Ginsburg and her family:

Ainsley Earhardt: Then you have Ruth Bader Ginsburg who told her granddaughter on her death bed, allegedly, that her dying wish was to have the next president choose her successor. How do you think all this plays out?
Trump: I don’t know that she said that, or was that written out by Adam Schiff and Schumer and Pelosi. I would be more inclined to the second. Okay, it came out of the wind. It sounds so beautiful. But that sounds like a Schumer deal or maybe a Pelosi or Shifty Schiff. So that came out of the wind. Let’s see. I mean maybe she did and maybe she didn’t.”

Trump’s assertion is entirely without foundation – or decency. He is of such weak character that he can’t help politicizing this tragedy by invoking the names of his favorite foils in Congress. Rep. Schiff replied on Twitter, telling Trump that “This is low. Even for you.” But how difficult would it be to believe that Ginsburg had such feelings. She said so many times before. Unfortunately, Trump has an insatiable need to drag everything down to his loathsome level, even if it means desecrating the memory of a universally respected and honorable American. Even if it means despicably disparaging Ginsburg’s last wishes as a Democratic hoax.

Perhaps Trump can’t believe that Ginsburg would make what he curiously concedes is a “beautiful” statement (that “came out of the wind,” whatever that means) because it so far outside anything he is capable of. But he went on to expose his true agenda that reeks of the totalitarian aspirations for which he is well known:

“The bottom line is that we won the election. We have an obligation to do what’s right and act as quickly as possible. We should act quickly because we’re gonna have, probably, election things involved here, you know, because of the fake ballots they’ll be sending out. A terrible situation.”

Oh My! Our infamously inarticulate president is recognizing the threat of “election things” involved here. Never mind that those “things” are manufactured lies about mail-in voting that Trump has been telling for months without ever bothering to provide a scrap of evidence.

More importantly, Trump is confessing that his obsession with confirming a new Supreme Court Justice is rooted in his determination to steal the election. He is anticipating a legal battle for which he wants to make sure that he has a majority on the Court to rule in his favor and, if necessary, declare him the winner. This is the sort of court manipulation that is more common under dictators who pack their courts with subservients and sycophants.

What’s more, this is not an aberration or careless misstatement. Trump made similar remarks on Saturday at his latest cult rally and Super Spreader event in North Carolina. Worried about the prospect of there not being a declared winner on election night, Trump expressed his nefarious desire to put the decision in the hands of a court system that he has packed with allies:

“Now we’re counting on the federal court system to make it so that we can actually have an evening where we know who wins. Not where the votes are going to be counted a week later or two weeks later.”

This is Trump’s way of disenfranchising citizens who vote by mail. If their ballots are postmarked on or before election day, but the ballot processing and counting is not completed until some time after, Trump wants all of those votes to be invalidated. He is literally calling for the suppression of voter’s rights. And since more Democrats vote by mail, it’s easy to see why Trump is pursuing this. It is just the logical progression of his yearning for unchecked tyrannical power. And it must be vigorously challenged if America is to remain a free democratic republic.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.